The Memory Keeper’s Daughter is about a doctor named David Henry who must deliver his own children, twins, in a blizzard. One is a healthy son, but the other is a girl with Down’s syndrome. Fearing that the girl with Down ’s syndrome will too much of a hassle for his delicate wife, Norah, he hands off his new daughter to the attending nurse, Caroline Gill. Ignoring the doctor’s demands to send the child to an institution, Caroline harbors the child as her own.
Norah, Dr. Henry’s wife doesn’t catch on that her long hoped for daughter is alive, but in the hands of somebody else, but believes the lie told to her by her husband, that Phoebe, the name given her, is dead and her funeral is next week. Norah falls into a deep melancholia and attempts to overcome it by drinking and deceit all her married life.
To no one’s knowledge, Caroline appears at the funeral, before she heads for Cleveland, then Pittsburgh with Phoebe and her new husband, Al, who are happily married. The book tracks the lives of the separated twins, Paul and Phoebe, as they grow and learn.
Do they ever find their parents? Do they ever even meet? Read The Memory Keeper’s Daughter to find out!
I personally thought that this book was touching and sad. At times it needed to pick up the pace a bit, as it was going too slowly. The author captures the essence of past times and how life was for a small family by writing an ordinary day experience that one would experience in the ‘60’s in great spirit, and she went about it in an excellent way of telling it overall.
Reviewed by: jacksparrow_136
